For centuries, board games have been an extremely popular form of entertainment for people of all ages. One category of popular board games involves one player trying to build predetermined patterns on the game board with playing markers before one's opponent builds the desired pattern. Well known games in this genre include Pente, gomoku and renju. Also, since 1974, the genre of pattern building games has included the very popular game of Connect Four™, a game published by Milton Bradley™. A much older version of Connect Four™ is known as The Captain's Mistress. These games relate to games of skill involving a competition between two or more players to build a desired pattern on the game board while preventing other players from building the desired pattern. All these games are played in a two-dimensional space.
Another category of popular board games involves games played in a three-dimensional space. For example, variations of three-dimensional chess have existed since the late nineteenth century, and one of the oldest versions is Raumschach, invented in 1907 by Ferdinand Maack. Another version of three-dimensional chess has also often appeared on the popular television show Star Trek. Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 3,656,755, issued to Thompson, for “Three-Dimensional Checker Game Apparatus” discloses a three-dimensional variation of checkers played on five pentagonal, vertically spaced game boards.
The prior art includes pattern building games that build patterns in a three-dimensional space. The game Qubic™ is the brand name of a four-in-a-row tic-tac-toe type game played in a 4×4×4 matrix and sold by Parker Brothers™ starting in 1953, and Milton Bradley's™ Score Four™, which involves building patterns of beads by stacking the beads on spindles. Furthermore, a few patents in the prior art disclose structures adapted to enable players to assemble game pieces on several different spaced parallel planes. U.S. Pat. No. 5,277,419, issued to Craig, for “Method of Playing a Three Dimensional Game” discloses a method for playing a tic-tac-toe type game on a 3×3×3 board configuration for multiple players using distinguishable sets of playing pieces for each player that can be played on any position on the board configuration and one marked playing piece per player that can only be played on the center position of each board. Also, U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,681, issued to Allen, for “Strategy Game With Two Or Three Dimensional Matrix And Balls” discloses another tic-tac-toe type game using a lattice type matrix forming a plurality of interconnected adjacent open cubes and spherical playing pieces to form patterns within the lattice where pushing the spherical playing pieces into the lattice can move playing pieces from one position in the lattice to another position in the lattice.
A third category of popular board games involves games where playing pieces are launched onto a game board with the objective of either landing the playing pieces on the board in a certain manner or landing the playing pieces on certain areas of the board to achieve a certain score. U.S. Pat. No. 2,432,824, issued to Shetler, for a “Game Apparatus” discloses a game that simulates the games of horse shoes, ring toss, and shuffle board by launching playing pieces from each end of a single-planed game board onto a scoring area. U.S. Pat. No. 3,675,924, issued to Smith, for “Projection Game Apparatus Including Paper Clip Projector And Closely Spaced Target Posts” discloses a game apparatus for projecting lightweight planar objects using a paper clip toward a plurality of spaced posts for individually ringing posts, leaning against one or several posts, or being suspended against gravity upon the plateau-like tops of two or more posts, the game board existing in a single plane. U.S. Pat. No. 5,435,570, issued to Labrasseur, for “Game Apparatus With Launching Device And Method Of Playing” discloses a game where projectiles are launched onto circuitous, closed-end, loop-shaped landing sites attached to columnar bases attached to the floor of a target housing with score indicators on the landing sites. The described embodiment simulates frogs jumping onto lily pads where the difficulty of landing on a particular lily pad is reflected in the score on the pad.
The concept of launching playing markers into a game board to achieve a desired pattern is also known in the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 4,243,227, issued to Strongin, for “Disc Projecting Game” discloses an action toy game wherein players launch game pieces through an upwardly-arched arcuate guide channel with the goal of landing the game pieces into a vertically supported hollow display section with a plurality of vertical compartments and with the further goal of achieving a certain pattern within the vertical compartments.
A disadvantage of the prior art is that it does not allow for a variety of games within embodiments where some games have the characteristics of a competitive sport where players act simultaneously and other games that involve intellectual strategy and skilled coordination in alternating turns.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a pattern building board game wherein the desired patterns are achieved by launching playing pieces onto multiple levels of trays or game boards in three dimensions, where each tray or game board is a matrix of recessed compartments. These arrangements allow games where a single playing area is shared by multiple players so that game play can include simultaneous launching and alternate launching and control of the recessed compartments can be defined by either the topmost playing piece in a compartment of the number playing pieces belonging to each player in each compartment. Such inventions allow for games that employ a combination of sport and intellectual strategy with a variation in the amount of sport versus intellectual strategy that may be utilized in the various games. For example, games with simultaneous launching into a single playing surface will have greater characteristics of a sport whereas games with alternate launching will have greater characteristics of an intellectual strategy game. In other embodiments, it would further be desirable to vary the difficulty of games with adjustments to certain aspects of the game boards or trays.
The inventions discussed in connection with the described embodiments address these and other deficiencies of the prior art. The features and advantages of the present inventions will be explained in or apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments considered together with the accompanying drawings.